ELEANOR Holmes Norton is a very brilliant lady. But once again, she shows that Democrats can put a spin on a 1-ton cube.

“Democrats believe in the rule of the law,” she said after a tornado hit here.

Tragically, for all of us, Eleanor Holmes Norton wasn’t talking about the rule of the law, she was talking about the rule of the Gore: My way or the highway.

As someone who has been a defender of the Cuban-American population, she said something that freakin’ offended me.

“What happened in Miami-Dade County was the way of a banana republic,” she told me.

She was referring to the fact that Miami-Dade suspended the idiocy of a recount of 630,000 ballots because of demonstrations.

A handful of Cuban-Americans got very angry at the way Miami-Dade County was going to recount those ridiculous chads, forever in our lexicon.

Eleanor Holmes Norton actually said: “Some of the counters [manual counters in the fourth recount] were intimidated by the mob outside.”

There were a few – no, maybe scores – 60 or 70 Cuban-Americans yelling and screaming how the Gore-ists were stealing the vote after multiple recounts.

Eleanor Holmes Norton thought naught of Jesse Jackson’s two demonstrations, which garnered a total of 10,000 honest human beings who were Gore supporters in Palm Beach County.

Recounters in Palm Beach County, under a Democratic umbrella led by Judge Charles Burton, were not intimidated by 10,000 people. But those in Miami-Dade County, according to Eleanor Holmes Norton, were intimidated by 50 guys and girls who wanted their voices heard.

This double-standard double-talk has to stop. This isn’t a disputed two feet in the end zone or a slide into third base.

There is theft afoot, and it comes from the Democrats.

With great respect to Eleanor Holmes Norton from Washington, D.C. – a town that makes us go to Pepto-Bismol and a loan from the bank – you are talking rubbish, and you’re too intelligent not to know it.

But to make a racial divide and target Cuban-Americans, I wonder whether you know what a minority is all about.

New Jersey Gov. Christie Todd Whitman, a Republican, was asked about Eleanor Holmes Norton’s statement about a “banana republic.”

Gov. Whitman said calmly, with no rhetoric: “That’s an extreme statement.”

Let me personally say this. Miami-Dade County’s recount board wasn’t terrified of 60 Cuban-Americans. They knew they could not recount 630,000 votes in four days. The Democrats are demanding that it must be done. How do you force a person to recount when they don’t want to recount?

Back to Whitman: “Miami-Dade opted not to do a recount. Broward County sampled 1 percent of the vote and found a nine-vote margin differential. They said they would not recount.

“Suddenly, the next morning, they said, ‘We will recount.’ Don’t you think there were some telephone calls made overnight?”

“Losing is an alien experience to Al Gore,” said Bill Turque of Newsweek, who wrote a book on the vice president.

Yesterday, I reported that Judge Griffin Bell, a Democrat attorney general under the Democrat President Jimmy Carter, was angry at the way Gore wants to win at any cost, and he said it should go to the people’s representatives, Congress, for the final decision.

Well, on Friday it goes to the Supreme Court, and that’s good enough for me, you or the person who let out the dogs.

So far, the rules have been changed by the Democrats more times than a streetwalker changes her stockings.

Rule of law? You get what you wish for, and Al Gore might get what he wishes for.

It will go to the Supreme Court, and that should be the end. I sincerely hope it’s the end of this spoiled brat who is demanding the presidency.